


Grey Waters Lost

by Lyricaris



Series: Harbinger's Harmony [2]
Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: One Shot, Other, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26037568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyricaris/pseuds/Lyricaris
Summary: Nerissa has a long overdue conversation with Luxa, and makes a new acquaintance. Set roughly three months after Gregor the Overlander (book 1).
Relationships: Nerissa & Luxa
Series: Harbinger's Harmony [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1894822
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Grey Waters Lost

The brush of Nerissa’s long skirt on the stone floor covered the sound of her footsteps as she snaked her way down through the palace and into the basement corridors. None of the guards on patrol paid her any attention. They wouldn’t, even if they had seen her. She was a familiar figure around the grounds by now, drifting past the sentries regularly on her frequent visits to the prophecy room. She was usually saluted or waved at with the appropriate gestures, but the motions always lacked the corresponding respect. Nerissa was the sickly princess, the one that needed to be looked after, even if she was the oldest of the royal cousins. Unable to fight, without a bond to fly, and more often than not judged mad within the confines of her own mind, she knew she disappointed those of her subjects whom she didn’t already unnerve. Somedays Nerissa felt more like a shadow than a person, and in the moments when the visions came and swarmed her mind she felt barely even that. It didn’t help that the wooden smiles directed at her were only present half of the time. When others were not consulting a prophecy or the line of succession, she was also easy to forget.

It was no wonder that Nerissa found most people draining. In walking around her expansive home, she had quickly learned the patterns of the patrols, and now she could avoid most guards by instinct. No gestures at all were better than empty ones. Tonight, though, she was taking extra caution. Her grandfather had been keeping an eye on her the past few months, and he was one of the ones who truly cared. Worried about her state, Vikus had made sure his people in the palace checked in with him on her whereabouts when he couldn’t find time to visit himself. Nerissa appreciated the thought, she really did, but sometimes it was too suffocating in her own palace chambers.

The sound of rushing water intensified as she descended, until it was pounding upon on her ears as she found the doorway she was looking for. She made her way carefully onto the landing, casting a weary eye on the frothing waters of the waterway below. Sidling sideways along the wet face of the rock, she followed a steep slope and stopped at a thin outcropping on the edge of the dock. It was tucked away opposite the boats, elevated above the embarkment, a ledge big enough for a few people that looked like a miniature cliff. The drop down to the water was higher here, but she still had ample view of the rushing waterway. Nerissa lowered herself into a sitting position, back to the jagged wall, dangling her legs off the face of the stone.

She could feel the wet ground beneath her soaking into her thin clothes. Flattening her hands against her seat, she leaned forward and inhaled the scent of the spray. The draft coming off of the water was a damp chill that made her shudder. She closed her eyes, and a minute later heard quiet, sure footsteps approaching.

“It is a dispiriting place that suits your fancy, cousin,” Luxa said as she took a seat beside Nerissa.

The queen's athletic build found balance on the ledge easily, one leg folded up to her chest and the other swinging off the side. She didn’t cling to the stone for support, instead resting her chin delicately on her knee as she turned to look at her cousin.

“I think that it has a bit more spirit than the room of prophecy,” Nerissa replied, barely above a whisper. “I needed a spot of open air.”

“There are many other such spots in the city. You could’ve asked Aurora and myself for a lift.”

“I do not need your charity,” Nerissa replied a little stiffly.

“I—I did not mean—” Luxa threaded her fingers together and set her interwoven fingers over her shin. “I would just…like to spend more time with you, now that…”

“That Henry is gone?”

Nerissa had always liked to look truths in the eye rather than dance around them, especially with her sight of the unknown terrors dawning ever nearer on the horizon. There were things that would or could happen, and then there were things that could not be changed. Nerissa sometimes doubted her mind, but she observed a strict line between past and present. If she did not, the visions were all too easy to succumb to.

Luxa had been silent for a long beat. Her shoulders and elbows were rigid, radiating a forced stillness despite the brisk breeze that stirred the shorn silver locks at the nape of her neck.

“We knew him best,” her cousin finally got out. It had been nearly three months since Henry’s death, and still the name could not pass the queen’s lips. “In my own grief…I have ignored that of my family’s, and yours especially. But I have realized it is something no one of us can carry alone.”

Luxa was nearly unparalleled in her agility at defending against the monsters that threatened Regalia, but unlike Nerissa she did not have years of experience fighting her own demons. After returning from the prophecy and sending off the Overlander, Luxa had spent many hours alone and outside of the city with Aurora and Ares. Few save Vikus had interfered with her self-imposed isolation, instead silently observing the faded outline of their young ruler that had once been full of vigor and daring. Nerissa had hated to see it, had known it would happen. When she had clung to Henry that day on his departure, she had buried herself in his arms, closed her eyes, and felt nothing but his pending demise. Doom, death and betrayal—but he had gone anyways, and Nerissa knew nothing in her power would have stopped him. Luxa didn’t think that way. The kingdom had always been hers, and since she was a child she had been taught that her actions would set the path for all of her people. She was _still_ a child—it was easy to forget she was only eleven, just over five years younger than Nerissa and yet asked to shoulder so many burdens. Nerissa felt a pang somewhere between her ribs and her stomach. She should have warned the queen, tried to reach out with a warning to the girl that was too brave for her own years.

She placed a bony hand on Luxa’s shoulder. “I should have reached out to you as well, cousin. The hole my brother has left…it will never be filled, but yet we can carry him with us.”

“But should we?” It was Luxa’s turn to whisper now. “I have lost those I love before, and yet his actions struck differently. I cannot stop thinking, if only he had fallen in battle, or even been slain in an ambush…” There was an empty beat while the younger girl found her breath before continuing. “You must think me vile, that I wish his death might have been more gruesome or drawn out, simply so that he would retain honor in his intentions.”

“No. No, I do not.”

Nerissa gave the queen’s shoulder a squeeze. In truth, Henry had been closer to Luxa than his own sister these past few years. His passions in life had dwindled to that of the showy or the violent after their parents’ deaths, and time spent in the arena or on the backs of fliers did not often involve a frail sibling.

“I have spent many hours thinking upon his betrayal,” Luxa was saying, “and of all our time together, of the oaths he also made to _me._ To think…all that time, all those conversations. And all the while, he wanted the crown enough, was resentful enough, that he would rather give me to—to the rats—”

Something wet fell on her hand. Nerissa thought it was drip from the wall until she turning to her cousin’s pale visage and saw the moisture streaming down her cheeks. Luxa’s expression had barely changed, only shifting to blink rapidly a few times. The girl didn’t reach up to brush the tears off her face, as if by not acknowledging them they might evaporate on their own.

It felt wrong, somehow, seeing the mask break, but Nerissa knew it was a privilege that Luxa was comfortable enough in her presence to let the walls down. She scooted closer and extended a thin arm. The queen leaned into her embrace, and Nerissa wrapped them both in her thick cloak, even though she couldn’t have provided much warmth.

“You saw it, didn’t you? What he would do…what he had planned.”

Nerissa took a deep breath. “I saw only his fear. His fear, and his hatred, and his determination. I…sought to look no further, although perhaps I should have.”

They were a silent for a moment, wrapped in a blanket of grief undercut with anger on Luxa’s part, and something more akin to guilt on Nerissa’s. There were so many things she outran, tried not to see. Henry’s cold, hard malice, which he covered by making unwise decisions, flashing arrogance like a shield and laughing in the face of fate. His casual cruelty, the way he treated those beneath him, even the disregard at times for his bond. And then there were the comments, the sharp tongue that would lash out at the mention of crawlers or gnawers, the disdain that he cast on the weak and the cold rancor with which he wielded his sword. But he had protected her, defended her condition and always looked after her. Once, when the doctors had been less than helpful after a particularly vicious bout of visions, he had nearly gotten violent in the hospital. It was a terrifying sort of love, and hypocritical too, considering the new philosophies that had carved themselves into his mind after the death of their parents. But Nerissa had loved him back for it, had leaned on him because he had seemed unbreakable.

“We should remember him as he was, before,” she recommended simply. “He made a mistake, and it cost all of us. Perhaps at the end his faults outshone his virtues, but we both know he was not without the latter.”

It was a cold sort of comfort, but what else was there to hold onto? Nerissa knew not the precise details in that moment before her brother had taken the plunge, the words and curses he had thrown Luxa’s way, but she refused to keep memories of her only sibling in such a light. She chose to see the bravery, the perseverance, the fierceness— because if the alternative was to recall only the evils, then she would rather not remember at all.

“I am glad to have you.” Luxa’s voice did not shake now; the tears had cleared as quickly as they had first fallen. “I do not know what I would do, if I were to lose anyone else.”

Nerissa smiled at that, squeezed the younger girl a little tighter. “I am here, cousin. Where would I go?”

“I—well, I was worried, when Grandfather told me how you were faring. That is why I came to find you tonight. I thought—perhaps it was too much, too…”

The realization jerked Nerissa’s spine upright against the cold stone, and the back of her head bumped against a ridge in the wall. She turned her head reflexively to look at the frothing waters down below. The dark rivulets of rushing current churned up against the serrated shores, boulders and debris tumbling on the tide through the tall walls of the cavern around them.

“You…thought I meant to jump?”

 _Like Henry,_ neither of them added. A different impetus, but the same conclusion.

“I was terrified you might try.” The queen sounded, for the first time in a long time, as young as she really was.

Nerissa swallowed on a dry throat. She could admit to herself that in her worst moments—when she could see nothing but omens of blood and terror, when massacres included an entire royal generation of Regalia, or when Ares had come back without Henry on his back—she had considered, for more than a fleeting moment, chasing oblivion. To be cleared of the premonitions, the swinging uncertainty of her world as it dangled on a pendulum of time that whispered only to her. Embracing nothingness would have been too easy, some nights. But tonight the voices were quiet, and she had a myriad of reasons to continue right in front of her.

She breathed out, drew away so she could grasp her cousin’s shoulders and look her right in her violet eyes. “That was not my intention, Luxa.”

“I am sorry. I became paranoid, perhaps, but you weren’t in your chambers, and finding you down here—what other reason would you have, to—”

Luxa gave a little hiccup. Nerissa sighed and pulled her back into a hug, resting her chin atop her cousin’s head. The gold circlet was noticeably absent from its customary home atop the silver tresses.

“No, I should be the one apologizing. I did not mean to distress you.” They both had enough horrors to work through, without causing each other more anxiety.

Luxa twisted sideways to establish eye contact again. “You can talk to me, Nerissa. Know you can come to me.”

“Of course.”

Although it wouldn’t be fair, putting more weight on a slip of a girl with the pressure of a realm already on her shoulders. But Nerissa wouldn’t—couldn’t leave her like this, and Luxa needed to know that. Her cousin didn’t look quite convinced, so she gestured at the river.

“I come here, Luxa, because it’s calming. The Waterway has probably been here for millennia, and will continue to flow long after we are gone. No human or flyer, gnawer or crawler can stand in the way of that.”

“And that is comforting to you?”

“To know how small we are, in perspective? Yes. Something steady, unchanging even as we build and burn around it…the Waterway reminds me of the fleeting, precious present.”

“I…will think on that.”

Nerissa smiled into the dark above Luxa’s head. There was something freeing about only being a speck of dust in the universe, a speck not yet consumed. “It does not always drive the darkness away, perhaps, but it is a good reminder of its impermanence.”

“And when it is not enough? What do you have to remind you to remind you that there is also light?”

Nerissa suspected the young queen was asking as much for herself as she was out of concern.

“Why, that’s easy. I have my visions.”

Luxa sat up, fixed her with a surprised grimace. “They bother you no longer?”

“If only. No, they bother me plenty. But they are not always bad. Very seldom, they will give me but a glimpse… of something good.”

That, she had never admitted before. Nerissa harbored her own fears that by confessing it aloud, the visions would stop this occasional respite. But Luxa…Luxa deserved to know.

“Good? Like what?”

They were only brief flashes, many of which Nerissa could not fully decipher. A vision of the queen and the Overlander, dancing, and then in another moment laughing and making faces as they played with some small device that captured images of them. Luxa, her coronation. Birthday parties…celebrations, and a young boy with black curls who Nerissa could not name but looked so familiar. He would become part of their family, of that much she was sure.

She elected to give her cousin only the broad strokes. “Like your reign …it will be long, and fruitful, I believe. And the Overlander. His path is marred with much violence, but he will return. He will return, and bring light with him.”

The queen seemed consoled by the mention of the Warrior. “Gregor? He comes back to the Underland?”

“I believe so, cousin.”

There was not much else to say after that. They were both tired, and after a few more minutes in each other’s company decided it was long past time they got some rest. Walking back through the palace in silence, Nerissa and Luxa stopped at the last hallway on the residential floor. Their chambers were in opposite directions, so they stopped to share one last hug and wish each other goodnight before parting ways.

Nerissa headed back to the room she had abandoned hours ago, but as she turned the corner another sound made her stop. She sidled into an empty archway and peered down the corridor, and was able to make out through the shadows the faintest of light from the door of nursery. In it, she could make out the shape of the nanny—Dulcet, wasn’t it? She had a child no older than two in her arms, who was fussing quietly. She was walking slowly up and down the hallway to rock the baby to sleep. Nerissa could hear Dulcet singing a thin melody that echoed softly off the stone walls in her direction.

Nerissa closed her eyes, propped herself up against the doorway and listened. It was a simple, gentle song, not one she recognized. Her mother or other caretakers must have sung to her when she was younger, but none had stood out. She did not have much taste for children’s lullabies, especially those with words—the meter and rhyme schemes tended to replay in her head too much like prophecies—but this lilting tune was surprisingly soothing. It reminded her of a time when she’d been younger, when the visions could have been but bad night terrors yet to come true.

The song slowly drifted away, and she checked the hallway again. The child had quieted and Dulcet was heading back into the nursery. Nerissa righted herself and started down the corridor once more, past the room full of sleeping children.

She was surprised when the nanny poked her head out of the door as she walked past, smiling at her. The child in her arms had been put to bed, it seemed, and Dulcet pulled at the door behind her very slowly so that the latch fell closed in near silence.

“Didn’t expect to see you up so late, Your Highness.”

Nerissa blinked. “Uh, good evening, Dulcet. It’s Nerissa, please…no one uses the title anymore.”

“Why not? You are cousin to the queen, no?”

 _And first in line for the throne_ , now that Henry was gone. Dulcet had enough tact not to state it aloud.

“I am. It’s not necessary, though, truly.”

Dulcet smiled, eyes twinkling in the warm torchlight coming from the opposite wall. She had a warm smile, and as simple as the expression was Nerissa had not seen it on many faces for much too long. It faded, though, as Dulcet’s gaze turned thoughtful.

“Nerissa, then—I never got a chance to say how sorry I am for your loss.”

Nerissa bit the inside of her cheek in surprise. Dulcet might have been the first person to offer condolences. The family could still barely talk about him. In the streets of the city he was an outright traitor, and within the walls of the palace that acrimony was only barely contained.

“Thank you very much. Did you know him?”

“No, not well. But he was always polite to me when we did meet.”

Nerissa pressed her lips together tightly, brow furrowing. She didn’t quite understand the gesture. “Then you do not grieve him yourself.”

“No, not personally, but was he not your brother? And was he not our prince? He defended Regalia for years before the decisions he made during the Prophecy of Grey.”

That was…one way look at it. Nerissa could have corrected her—mentioned the scars he’d left behind, the wounds he’d started carving years before his true plans had come to light. But if there was one person in the city willing to be forgiving of the dead, she was much too exhausted to correct it.

The words, though…they said more about the girl than Henry. Nerissa pulled her cloak tighter around herself and studied Dulcet. The girl was around fifteen, she thought, a handful of inches shorter than her with a kind heart-shaped face and a hint of dimples. Nerissa had seen her around the palace, knew she was a hard worker and exceptional with children, but other than that was coming up empty. If she had been looking for compassion for her brother’s actions, she certainly wouldn’t have imagined she would find it here.

“Apologies, if I have said something untoward. I did not mean to overstep.”

“You have not, worry not of that,” Nerissa murmured back. “I am…very appreciative of your consideration.”

Dulcet smiled again, and this time the princess took an extra beat to drink it in. “Of course. But I must be heading to bed myself. I bid you a good night, Princess Nerissa.”

She dipped her head, repeated the farewell, and then watched for a moment as the nanny walked away down the hall. An odd encounter, perhaps, but not an unpleasant one. Between the royal dilemmas and her own curse, Nerissa often forgot about the citizens of the city they so passionately tried to shield from harm.

It was a good reminder, that there was life here to protect, not just walls and stone and heraldry. Perhaps, Nerissa noted as she finally reached her chambers, not _all_ people were draining.


End file.
